A Pastor’s Thoughts: Family Life

By Pastor Kevin Boothby, Tracy Creek Memorial Church —

It was about a week before we left. We’re looking at the scenery, almost majestic-like. I remember my kids shouting from the car on the empty side road, driving in between rice fields that extend just about as far as we could see. They were shouting, “Korea is awesome!” “Thank you!” and “We’ll miss you Korea!”

An era of our family life was coming to an end. We pull over, my wife and I hold one another and look at the valley of rice. We wonder what God has planned for our next era. Where would we end up, and what would we be doing? How long will we be there? Will I have a job before my military pay runs out a few months after we get back to the States?

From the time we got married in 2009 we have experienced so much. We lived in the State of Maine and had our first child there. Then I moved to North Carolina for military training. Then Virginia. Then back up to Maine for a few days, and our journey together begins. 

We moved to the State of Washington. We have our second child, and adopt our third. We moved to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Korea. 

Korea is full of unknowns and twists and turns. She had several miscarriages, totally unexpected, it had never happened before. Finally my fourth child is born, as I’m sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic in Seoul, coming home from a machine gun range that is just a couple of miles South of the 38th parallel. Finally I arrived five hours later at the hospital in the middle of the night to learn they had just taken our newborn to a Korean hospital an hour away fifteen minutes before I got there. 

And now we’re here in the great State of New York. We love it here, being here for about a year and a half. Pastoring a small country church, Tracy Creek Memorial Church. A ministry full of more unknowns. What is God going to do with us here? What will He bring to our little church? What is He going to bring to our family? 

None of us would want it any other way. We’re exactly where God has planned for us to go. We love our life here in Vestal, N.Y., serving our God and loving our church family. We never expected to be here, but we know that God has work cut out for us, and until it is very clear that He’s calling us somewhere else we accept our life here together.

Embracing the unknown can be challenging. Uprooting your life is no small feat. For some, even continuing your life seems like no small feat. Life is full of twists and turns, along with challenges that we never thought we’d have to face. Challenges and changes that are not in our control. We can try to plan around them if we’d like, but at the end of the day we don’t know what they’re going to be, and no amount of planning can truly prepare us for what we don’t know is coming.

 In the New Testament in the Bible, in James 4:13-14, it says, “Come now,” you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.” 

You see, planning is a good and wise thing to do. However, the moment we lose sight that it’s only God who knows what lies ahead, we’re going to be left worrying.

When we talk about embracing the unknown, we don’t mean that we have to like it. We just need to go into it with the mindset that God is in control of it. When we trust in God, who knows everything, it doesn’t mean we believe everything He sends our way in this life is going to be good. We must trust in the Lord nevertheless, and step forward knowing whatever it might be we’re going through, whether it’s a time of trial, a time of rejoicing, or a time of not knowing; God is in control of it. 

The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can embrace what God sends our way.